


hang the dj

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Game, Simulation, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 07:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13453671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Momota wakes up from the simulation to the news that a) he isn't dead, and b) he will be dead soon. He doesn't know how to deal with this - but it seems as though Harukawa and Saihara know exactly what to do.





	hang the dj

_Momota breathes in one last, final, ragged breath as blood burns its way up his throat; he sees stars all around him, encompassing him, drilling their way into the marrow of his bones as he chokes for just one more gasp. Silence, then, and he closes his eyes, accepting death – his only defeat, and the most prominent failure of his short burst of a life._

With a terrifying splutter of built-up spit and stale air in his mouth, Momota chokes himself awake. His throat is torn up, his head feels as though it’s splitting in two, and the overbearing confusion weighs down on him like a thousand knives pressing into every inch of his weary flesh. Musing on the fact that he’s most likely experiencing death, he clenches his teeth and presses his nails into his fist – his fingernails are longer than he remembers, and he wonders if his entire time at the Ultimate Academy was merely a fever dream.

But no; a construction of his mind couldn’t feel so real. Mere thoughts couldn’t send him into a permanent spiral of teetering on the cliff-edge of self-hate and anxiety. And he has movement; he knows this because he’s tearing into the flesh of his palm with his nails. Slowly, as if emerging from underneath murky, stagnant water, his senses come back to him. The dull pain of sharp shocks permeates the pores of his body, and he tests himself by moving his head up; he’s hooked up to various machines, needles sticking into his arm, pumping unknown fluids into his body. He experiences a terrifying urge to tear them out and slit his throat with the tiny, precise points.

“Subject 12 is awake,” a voice from next to him speaks. He doesn’t recognise it, but he can tell that it belongs to a woman, and he turns his head to see who is talking; every muscle and bone in his body creaks with lack of use.

“W-Who,” he bites down on his fear as he struggles to remember how to talk, “the _fuck_ are you?”

“Momota, you’re awake. I trust you remember your time at the Ultimate Academy?”

“Y-You…what…I…”

“It’s natural that your mind will be a little hazy. Please, try to answer our questions. Do you remember your time at the Ultimate Academy?”

“H-How do you…where am I…what the fuck?”

“You’ve been in a simulation. The killing game you experienced was part of an intelligent virtual reality program that you signed up for.”

“I-I…signed up for?”

“Yes. It’s expected that you won’t remember. All of us here work for Team Danganronpa, and you willingly participated in the fifty-third killing game. Your experience, along with your fellow Ultimates, was broadcast to the world. Is your memory returning to you?”

“N-No…I…I _died.”_

“Ah, yes, the simulated execution. We were quite proud of that one; you succumbed to your implanted illness in, I believe, Chapter Five.”

“Implanted illness? Chapter Five? So you’re saying…”

“Precisely. None of what you experienced was real. You’ve woken up from a medically induced coma; confusion is to be expected.”

“Wait…you said ‘fellow Ultimates’. So Saihara and Harumaki are…? They’re…okay?”

“They’re doing just fine, Momota. Saihara woke up immediately after…shall we say, _destroying_ the finale, and Harukawa soon after.”

“I need to see them.”

“I’m sorry, that isn’t possible.”

“Let me fucking see them.”

“Saihara is undergoing extensive therapy, and Harukawa has requested that she be placed in complete isolation.”

“Fuck you,” Momota spits, “they’re my _friends.”_

“Perhaps you think that,” the woman says, “but you’ve never met them. You’ve met their virtual avatars, and you were guided into a friendship by our complex algorithms; trust me, you know nothing about them.”

“How the hell would you know?”

“We _created_ you, Momota. You’re nothing more than a Team Danganronpa gimmick. Now, excuse me, I need to run some tests.”

The woman sticks a large needle into his arm without any more warning; he tries not to wince at the pain, but his entire body feels like static, and the piercing reality of his blood being drawn tethers him to the cruel, sensory world in which he exists, and cannot escape.

“I-I didn’t fucking say you could do that,” he spits.

“Oh, but you did! I have a copy of the contract that you signed in my office. You have terrible handwriting, by the way.”

Momota cringes as she pulls the needle out; he’s strangely fascinated when he looks at the vials of his own blood that she’s now holding in her fist. Still mesmerised, he can’t react as she adjusts one of the needles in his arm, and a hot, thick liquid courses through his veins, sending him straight into an uncomfortable sleep.

He wakes to hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake; vaguely aware that there are more than two people surrounding him, he opens his eyes. Harukawa is trying to wake him, whilst Saihara holds his hand as he lies limp on the bed.

“Momota,” Harukawa breathes a sigh of relief, “thank god you’re awake!”

“H-Harumaki?”

“God, we were so worried,” she says, “I came the moment I heard.”

“Y-Yeah,” Saihara says, “Yonaga heard from Chabashira that Akamatsu had spotted you talking to a nurse when she was sneaking out of her room.”

“W-Wait,” Momota replies, “hold on. They’re…dead, aren’t they?”

“No,” Saihara says, “we just thought they were. The whole thing was a fucked up simulation – it was all some reality TV show that we signed up for. But you…god, Momota, I thought you were _dead.”_

“Yeah,” he laughs weakly, “me too.”

Suddenly, the door to the room bursts open, and the nurse from earlier walks in.

“Saihara, Harukawa,” she says, “you’re not authorised to be here. Leave.”

“No fucking way,” Harukawa says, “you can’t keep us apart any longer.”

“Don’t make me sedate you all.”

“Just you fucking try.”

“In case you’re forgetting, Harukawa, you’re not the brilliant assassin that we made you out to be in the game. You’re just a girl, and you’re nothing against a needle full of anaesthetic. Leave – _now.”_

“Harumaki,” Momota says, “it’s okay. We’ve got the rest of our lives ahead of us, haven’t we?”

She nods, and pulls Saihara away from Momota. Shooting the nurse a glare as she leaves the room, Harukawa takes one final, longing look at Momota and turns on her heel to walk away.

“Momota,” the nurse says, “do you have a moment?”

“I’m not exactly fucking going anywhere.”

“R-Right,” she says, “of course. The thing is – I checked your bloods and…well, there’s no nice way to put this. The illness we gave you didn’t contain itself to your virtual avatar.”

“So?”

“So…you’re still sick. And we created the disease, but we didn’t create a cure.”

“You…what?”

“Momota, we’re sorry, but you’re going to die.”

“N-No…I…can’t,” he stutters, “you said…simulation…Harumaki…Saihara…”

“Yes, we’re terribly sorry. As a show of our condolences and good will, we’ll be doubling your prize money to send to your next of kin.”

“P-Prize money? You think you can put a _fucking_ price on my life, you bitch? You started this bullshit, you fix it!”

“We’re terribly sorry, Momota. I won’t sedate you. I don’t know how long you have left. You’re lucky if you get a full day.”

“Christ…fuck,” he says, “thought I was dead once already. Can I at least see Saihara and Harumaki, then?”

“I suppose…yes, I suppose an exception can be made, given the… _circumstances.”_

“Fuck you,” Momota splutters, and falls back against his pillow. He can taste blood in the back of his throat – he’s unsure if it’s subconscious or genuine – but he just wants to be surrounded by the two people that matter to him once more. Comforted and contorted by thoughts of death, he falls into a restless sleep.

By twilight, he wakes once more to the welcoming feeling of both his hands enclosed within the hands of another; Harukawa is on his left side, Saihara on his right. On the table beside his bed, a neatly prepared tray sits, two cups of tea sitting untouched – he assumes, one for each of his lovers.

“Momota,” Saihara says, “we’re here.”

“You’re going to be okay,” Harukawa tells him.

“Guys - what’s going on?”

“Oh, god,” Saihara says, “I didn’t know it was going to be this hard.”

“Momota,” Harukawa says, “you’re dying. Like, _right now_ , dying. All the machines you’re hooked up to started going haywire when you were asleep.”

“Bullshit, Harumaki, I feel fine.”

“I know. They’ve given you more medicine than legally allowed. You won’t feel a thing – I don’t trust them generally, but I have to trust them on this. They said you’d…go…painlessly.”

“I’m not…I mean…I can’t…”

“I’m sorry, Momota. You have moments left, at most.”

“But…I can’t…I still haven’t…”

“Squeeze my hand,” Harukawa says, “you’re not going alone.”

“Not going alone?”

Saihara passes Harukawa one of the cups, and she takes a long, resolute gulp of the lukewarm tea. Momota notices that his lovers do this at the same time, and their expressions tell him that he’s missing something vital.

“Harumaki...Saihara, tell me. What do you mean I’m not going alone?”

“We don’t want to live without you,” Saihara says, “so we decided…to die, too.”

“W-What?”

“Yeah, he’s right,” Harukawa says, “this tea has a deadly poison in it. It should be relatively painless; it’ll all be over in under ten minutes. For all of us.”

“Guys, you can’t! You have lives; genuine, healthy lives. You can’t throw it all away for me, fuck, I don’t want you to! And what if I’m not even dying? I feel fine, and I don’t want you guys to leave me all alone here!”

“That’s the thing,” Harukawa says, “we’re making sure that we don’t leave you alone. Oh, Momota, can’t you hear your own heart rate monitor? You don’t have long left.”

“I-I can’t hear it. Harumaki, why can’t I…why did you?”

“Shh,” Saihara says, “you’ll be okay.”

He sits on the side of the bed, and Harukawa does the same. Awkwardly, but with all the love in the world, they lie down so that both of them are touching Momota; the bed isn’t built for three, but they make do, as they always have. Although his senses are fading fast, Momota becomes hyper-aware of the feeling of Harukawa and Saihara’s hands in his own, and the warmth of their palms travels from his own hands, right up his veins, encompassing his entire body with the feeling of never being alone.

As his vision begins to blur and his breathing begins to slow, he knows that it’s time for him to go. Filled with regret at taking the two most important people with him, he closes his eyes and lets the euphoria of a true, genuine death wash over him.

“I love you, Harumaki. I love you, Saihara,” he says.

After this, his hearing fails him completely. He sits, a shell, waiting for his spirit to join the beautifully departed, knowing that he doesn’t need to hear confirmation that Harukawa and Saihara love him, too.

 _“Perhaps,”_ he thinks, as death takes him, “ _the afterlife will be kind to us all.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this quick angst! I love pre-game and post-game fics, especially training trio. Leave a comment if you enjoyed; I read and reply to them all!
> 
> Title from 'Panic' by The Smiths. I absolutely love the phrase 'Hang the DJ'; eliminate who's in control of the party. It's very accurate for post-game training trio fics.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Have a lovely day :^)


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